CULPEPER'S COMPLETE HERBAL

NAVEW

Description. The first leaves are moderately broad and long, they are of a pale green, in shape like a turnip leaf, but less, and very little hairy. The stalks grow to be two or three feet hight, beset with smaller leaves, smooth as well as the stalk, and little or nothing jagged, especially those that grow higher upon the branches, which are round and broad at the bottom, and do encompass the stalk, ending in a narrow point, of a blueish colour. The flowers grow many together on teh tops of the stalks, made of four bright yellow leaves, and are succeeded by long cylindrical pods, containing small round black seed; the root is white, longer and slenderer than a turnip, but much like it in taste.

Place. It is sown in gardens.

Time. It flowers in April. The root is used in food and the seed in physic.

Government and virtues. This is a plant of Venus. The seed is commended by the ancients as good against all kinds of poisons, and the bites of venomous creatures, to provoke urine, and the terms. Matthiolus extols it against all kinds of infectious distempers, to expel the malignity, and cheer the heart; as also to drive out the small-pox and measles. It is an ingredient in the therica andromachi, but common turnip-seed is often substituted.